


Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?

by SufferingIsAChoice



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: David dies, Death, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Married Couple, Post-Canon, Post-Save Chloe Price Ending, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, chloe processes, graveyard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:00:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29882871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SufferingIsAChoice/pseuds/SufferingIsAChoice
Summary: Chloe has moved on with her life. Then a call comes, David is dead, and she has to deal with that. Minor Pricefield. One off ventfic.
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price
Comments: 21
Kudos: 18





	Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?

"And then I'm awake, and I'm guarding my face,

Hoping you don't break my stereo,

Because it's the one thing that I couldn't live without.

So then I think about that, and I sorta black out."

***

The day was normal. The cars came in and out of the shop, she and the rest of the boys joked and laughed with each other and the day was normal. Nothing was out of the ordinary. It was a Tuesday.

And then her lunch came, and her wife called her. There was nothing unusually about that. Her wife's schedule was loose, between photo shoots, and she frequently called. She knew when her lunch break was, and she thought nothing of it. But what she said was not usual.

"Hey, the Fantastic Max, what's up, cutie?"

"He's dead."

"Wait, what? Kerouac? Did I kill yet another plant?"

"No, not that. Him. He's dead, Chloe."

"Who?"

"David."

***

Max was showering, in the other room, as Chloe looked at herself in the mirror. She could do that again, without wanting to smash it, or scream, or graffiti everything in sight. She had not marked the day she was able to do that. She had not noticed it, but she did now. She was able to be at home with the woman she had become.

Her hair had grown back out, longer, and frizzed from the day in the shop. Grease still trailed through the lines of faded dye. How many times had she dyed her hair since then? She had shaved it and grown it out, and now it was just her. There had been a day that was all she could control. Her own body.

And not always even that.

There was that photo Max had loved. The two of them, together, looking at the camera. The old momento mori tattoo half way blacked out, before her sleeve was finished. In the desert. She said she had sent a copy of it to him. Had he kept it? What had it meant to him? She had gotten that tattoo to be herself, to convince herself that she could control...something. That she was in control. Her arm, covered in black ink, now, ached as she heard her wife turn off the shower.

***

She had heard that they had rebuilt Arcadia Bay, and then it burned, destroyed yet again. She did not care. She could not control that, right? She could not control that, like she could not control her childhood.

So why did she replay it over, and over, and over, as the miles wound away, under the wheels of her pickup?

"Chloe?"

"Yeah, Max?" Chloe said, softly, reaching across towards the passenger seat. "What's up?"

"You've barely talked this entire time. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"No. I don't want to."

"Then why are we?" Max asked, touching her shoulder lightly.

"Because there are things I never got to tell him. Things I never will, now, but I need to say them. I need to say how they felt."

"Then I am with you. Forever."

"St. Joseph's baby aspirin," the radio sang, "Bartles and Jaymes, and you, or your memory."

***

There was a photo she had kept through the years. The only photo of the two of them together. She had nearly burnt it with everything else from back then. But for some reason she had kept it. She had kept it during the night where she finally cried, in Max's lap, and let the whole story fall apart, running from her mouth along with the tears.

It was not only the time you saw, she had said. It was not only that last time, the one Joyce had defended. It was every time before that, too. It was listening to music in hopes that she would not have to hear him. The attempts at control. It was hiding Rachel, and the porn mags, and the crushes on girls, and everything else. Trying to figure out what she was doing wrong. It was the times she had been unable to stop. The way he had hit her, and abused her. It was the smell of him, and the sound of boots on stairs. It was the way she still flinched at broken dishes. The way she was still mad.

And she knew there was no going back. The powers had gone, and there was no way to return to the way things had once been. She was forever the Chloe that he had made her. She was forever scared, and afraid, and trying to stay in control of the uncontrollable.

"You're my Chloe," Max had said, stroking her hair. "We can still control that."

***

The pickup rolled to a stop in the graveyard. The grass was green, and the sky was blue, and the sun was bright, as the engine died. Somewhere nearby a bird was singing, and someone was mowing grass. A butterfly flicked in front of her, as she climbed out. It was incongruously beautiful.

She took her wife's hand as she walked up the hill, towards the grave, with its freshly disturbed earth. But she dropped Max's hand, about twenty feet away, and walked the rest herself. Alone.

There was no way, no path, no time machine back to those days, now. There was no way to undo what had happened, or what he had done to her. Not one line of it could be rewritten. But still Chloe felt a connection, there, as she knelt in front of the single, lonely slab of granite. She felt a connection to the Chloe she had been, in that sun-filled room, under the graffiti, with the American flag, with Rachel and then waiting for Max.

"Here Lies David Madsen," the gravestone said, "Soldier, Father, Husband."

"David," she began, her voice cracking. "David, first off, fuck you, and fuck everything you every stood for, I hope you rot in hell, you son of a bitch and..."

She caught herself, as he voice got away from her. The birds were still singing, and everything was so sunny. There had been too many graves in her life. This was not what she had meant to say. But it was what she felt. She wanted to feel it, but something in her died looking at this grave.

She did not know what she wanted to say. She had not planned this out. All she knew was that she did not forgive him. But still, she had one last gift to get rid of. So she reached forward, and placed the photo on his grave, before speaking again, softer, almost choking on the tears.

"I survived you. I won, after everything. I am still me," she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "I have a life, and a wife, and everything you thought I would never have. I hope you find some peace that was denied you in life, David, but I hope you know that I will never forgive you. And everything I am, I am not because of you, but in spite of you. Goodbye, David. I don't think I'll see you again."

She knew she could not go back, but still, in that moment, she felt a connection reaching back, through the years, to the her she had been. You are going to survive, she wanted to tell her, if she could whisper through a photo, like Max. You are going to survive, and have a good life, despite everything. You are going to have a wife who loves you, and friends, and plants, and a dog together. You are going to have soft mornings and gentle rains. You will make it out of there alive, and you will tell your story. We will be alright, Chloe, she wanted to tell that child. I promise.

She stood, and walked away from him, back towards her wife, and their life together. And on his grave she left the photo, of them, together, across from each other, at her birthday. The only photo of them together, left to decay along with his body.

***

"Held under these smothering waves,

By your strong and thick-veined hands.

But one of these days,

I'm gonna wriggle up on dry land."

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes at the beginning and end are from "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod," and the radio is playing, "You or Your Memory," both by the Mountain Goats, from their album about abuse and survival titled, "The Sunset Tree."
> 
> "Absolutely...I ask survivors when they come up to me at the merch line, "has your abuser died yet?" And they will say, "no" and I will say, "I want you to be ready, cause it is, I hate to say this (I don't wish death on anybody), it is wonderful when your abuser dies. It's wonderful, it's like nothing in the world. It's like you are free." There's a feeling that you will never be free of what you were, you know, there's that...But to know that the person who used to hurt you no longer can is very very very deep. It's unbelievable."
> 
> "Do you forgive him?"
> 
> "No."
> 
> -John Darnielle


End file.
